Organisations
The Directory of Open Access Books: The primary aim of DOAB is to increase the discoverability of open access books. Academic publishers are invited to provide metadata of their open access books to DOAB. Includes the DOAB Criteria.
The Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ is a unique and extensive index of diverse open access journals from around the world, driven by a growing community, committed to ensuring quality content is openly available online for everyone. Includes the DOAJ Criteria.
OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks): OAPEN promotes and supports the transition to open access for academic books by providing open infrastructure services to stakeholders in scholarly communication.
Evaluation Tools
Compass to Publish: an interactive tool from the Liege University Library to help you determine the degree of authenticity of open access journals with article processing charges (APCs) using a criteria-based evaluation.
EIFL Guide: Choosing a Journal for Your Research: The guide includes a comprehensive checklist for evaluating the key elements of a journal and its website and is designed to help researchers to choose the most appropriate journal for their work.
Journal Evaluation Tool: A tool created specifically to address the concerns of our Loyola Marymount University faculty about Open Access journals, but this rubric may be applied more broadly to any kind of journal.
Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker: Hijacked journals mimic legitimate journals by adopting their titles, ISSNs, and other metadata. Also Retraction Watch Database.
Toolkits and best practice for OA publishing
The OAPEN Open Access Books Toolkit: A Toolkit aimed at promoting and supporting open access (OA) to academic books. It consists of short articles covering a wide range of topics relating to OA books, including a list of sources referenced, further reading and links to definitions of key terms.
OA Journals Toolkit: The OA Journals Toolkit guides new and established open access journals to navigate the rapidly changing scholarly publishing landscape. It is regularly updated and contains useful sections on starting and running a journal, policies, staffing, etc.
Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing: a set of principles for scholarly publications, updated by COPE, DOAJ, OASPA, and WAME.
Withdrawal of accepted manuscript from predatory journal: advice from the COPE forum in the case of a researcher who unwittingly published a review article in a predatory journal.
Training resources
Choosing an effective publishing strategy: a training resource from EIFL.net which covers book publishing, and examines journal publishing in more depth. It also looks at how researchers can maximize the impact of their research, increasing discoverability and visibility, and how to communicate, promote and monitor research output.
The Royal Society: Publishing your research? How to avoid predatory journals: A video guide published by the Royal Society.
Studies and articles
Combatting Predatory Academic Journals and Conferences: a study from 2022 gauging the extent and impact of predatory practices, identifying their root causes, and reviewing efforts to combat them.
Predatory Publishing: a discussion document from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), introducing issues, and analysing potential solutions around predatory publications.
Predatory behaviour in publication ethics: An article by COPE showing that predatory publishing is just one aspect of a wider network of unethical activities.
Predatory journals can harm health research, hold back academic progress: In The Nation’s Health, April 2025, a publication for public health researchers.
Predatory Journals — What Can We Do to Protect Their Prey?: An article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, January 6, 2025.